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This study aims to reveal the constituents of seafaring service quality (physical and social environment) and their effects on seafarer employee satisfaction (job satisfaction and turnover intention) and analyse any differences among seafarer ranks. Literature on service quality has overlooked the transportation sector and seafaring in particular.

Seafaring service quality is measured by the workplace environment constituted of physical and social environments. Two types of employee (job) satisfaction were explored: overall job satisfaction and turnover intention. This study is based on a unique, large survey based on the Existence-Relatedness-Growth (ERG) needs theory. An exploratory factor analysis revealed four physical environment factors (Ship conditions, Communication facilities, Nautical health and Living conditions) and four social environment factors (Social fit, Team cohesion, Ship company support and Intercultural environment). Multi-group regression analysis assessed the effects of seafaring service quality on employee satisfaction.

The social environment has stronger effects than the physical environment on job satisfaction but not on employee retention. Team cohesion has strong effects on employee retention, while social fit has stronger effects on overall job performance. Seafarer ranks showed significant variations. The physical environment matters for 2nd engineers' and cadets’ job satisfaction but not for ratings, masters and chief officers. Team cohesion is significant to master, chief officer, engineer and cadet ranks but not for junior officers and ratings. Social fit has stronger effects on overall job performance than employee retention, particularly for ratings, cadets, master, chief officer and chief engineer ranks. Ship company support has the stronger effect on overall job satisfaction among all workplace factors; this is also observed across all ranks.

Motivation theories like the ERG theory can help understand service quality and employee satisfaction in the maritime sector; future studies should examine more behaviour variables/constructs from these theories.

Maritime companies can offer better services to seafarers, who are considered as key workers, by customising their interventions to specific seafarer ranks and developing a supportive culture that improves seafarer well-being.

This study examined the overlooked topic of maritime service quality based on a large-scale survey grounded on ERG theory and reveals how the physical and social environment has different effects on seafarer job satisfaction and retention.

The maritime industry is crucial to the global economy and the scarcity of seafarers is an urgent concern. Seafarers are in short supply right now and will continue to be so in the foreseeable future. This study interrogates Jamaica’s position as a seafarer labour market through the prism of the industry’s apparent scarcity of seafarers (officers) while examining Jamaica’s maritime education and training system as a tool for nation-building. Previous studies have almost exclusively focused on specific jurisdictions, but as far as we know, very little research has investigated Jamaica as a maritime labour market.

To achieve the aim of this study, mixed-method research was applied in collecting and analyzing data.

The study revealed that Jamaican seafarers possess several positive attributes such as good communication skills, they are typically well trained and have good cross-cultural skills, making them compatible with a multicultural crew. However, the supply of Jamaican seafarers continues to be low due to several challenges, including a lack of government support for the sector, lack of key stakeholder collaboration and a lack of awareness about career prospects.

The topic of seafarer supply is a broad one, and due to its scope and practical limitations, detailed statistical studies were not undertaken. As a result, further work is needed to establish more precise correlations between the essential variables.

Many findings point to Jamaica’s strengths as a provider of seafarers, yet problems and obstacles were also mentioned. The study’s findings point to a lack of maritime awareness among youth, as well as, perhaps surprisingly, among stakeholders and policymakers. The paper provides a holistic report on Jamaica’s status as a seafaring supply country that policymakers can use to inform policy and to upscale Jamaica’s seafaring output.

A career as a seafarer can be both intriguing and lucrative. Hence, creating a conducive environment that promotes training, world-class certification and seafarers’ employment may increase seafarers’ output and, by extension, contribute to Jamaica’s economy and nation-building.

Jamaica’s status as a maritime labour market is insufficiently studied and as a result several key questions and notions have not as yet been discussed. This study explores the maritime labour market in Jamaica and documents what exists.

This paper aims to examine three of the major issues relating to the welfare of seafarers, including wages, social security benefits and onboard and ashore welfare facilities and services. It is impossible to research all countries here, so this paper selects Greece – which is one of today’s primary shipping countries as for shipowning, as well as for global supply and demand for seafarers – to conduct an empirical case study.

Based on the existing knowledge and scholarship, and primary data collected in several phases of fieldwork, this paper intends to critically examine three major issues relating to the welfare for Greek seafarers, namely, wages, social security benefits and onboard and ashore welfare facilities and services.

This paper finds that they face poor labour conditions, which are getting worse due to the depressed world and Greek economies and intense financial pressures on shipping companies. The entry into force of the Maritime Labour Convention 2006 has a significant impact on the world maritime industry.

This paper critically examines the three major issues relating to the welfare of Greek seafarers.

Such issues, which Greece is facing are also common in other countries, so the findings and suggestions revealed from this paper are of importance for the global shipping industry and other states.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on the aims of discovering the problems existing in the seafarer recruitment management system and of finding out an efficiency recruitment system for shipping companies to retain skillful seafarers continue serving in their companies.

This study interviewed with the senior managers of shipping companies to clarify the seafarers’ problems they have encountered and conducted questionnaire survey to collect the seafarers’ perceptions for further analysis. Exploratory factor analysis and multi-regression analysis were applied for the data analysis.

There were four primary dimensions relating to seafarers’ management, namely, work attitude, loyalty, payment and welfare and opportunity. The results revealed that dimensions of payment and welfare and opportunity were significantly positive effect on seafarers’ loyalty; only the dimension of payment and welfare was found to significantly effect on the work attitude. However, these four dimensions were all found a positive effect on the work performance as well.

The results of cross-section research cannot fit all economic fluctuation conditions.

The ship owners and the operators should consider both the environmental motivation and the hygiene factor to establish a proper seafarers’ recruitment management system to retain seafarers and lead to better performance of the seafarers. The study findings also suggest the shipping company should pay attention to hire local seafarers, i.e. seafarers from the place where the company is based, as those local seafarers might have more work commitment than seafarers from other countries.

The findings of the study show that welfare and opportunity is the most important factor on loyalty, while it also exerts significant effect on work attitude and work performance. The results suggest that the motivation and performance are not merely dependent upon environmental needs (payment). The findings provide evidences of the importance of non-monetary remuneration within the seafarers’ recruitment management system.

The purpose of this paper is to examine some of the complexities associated with the trust-building process between participants and researcher in the context of a precarious work environment. Specifically, the paper seeks to discuss issues arising from the power dynamics, mistrust and tensions between different stakeholders in the research (i.e. employers, employees and the researcher), and the implications of such relationships for establishing rapport and trust with research participants.

This paper uses the case of the shipping industry and is based upon findings from two research projects. One project examined similarities and differences between the merchant vessel and Goffman’s theoretical conceptualisation of “total institutions” (Goffman, 1961); the other focused on the increasing flexibility of labour in the global labour market, using the case of shipping. Both projects incorporated ethnographic research methods which included three voyages on board merchant vessels, as well as interviews and informal conversations with over 100 participants.

The researcher encountered several obstacles throughout the projects, many of which related to the access to the restricted workplace setting of a cargo ship. However, this paper is based on her positioning in the field after permission to access the ship had been granted by the shipping company. It was often challenging to overcome participants’ suspicions of the researcher as being sent by the company to spy on them. The researcher generally managed to overcome such suspicions in the course of her fieldwork by building relationships with participants over time. Nevertheless, these relationships were influenced by the complex power dynamics amongst the different stakeholders in the field. The challenges encountered in the field sites suggest that researchers should be open and fluid in the ways they present themselves in the field. The findings potentially offer useful insights for novice researchers whose research focuses on workplace settings characterised by precariousness of employment and for those conducting shipboard research.

The main contribution of this paper lies within its ability to shed light on the often-delicate relationships between different stakeholders in a research project, and the influence of these relationships on a researcher’s continuous access to the field. The experiences described in this paper are based on the global shipping industry, but they are also relevant to other closed, isolated and/or restricted research settings. Specifically, experiences described in this paper are similar to those of researchers studying “closed” research environments that are not accessible to the general public; this is particularly the case where a hierarchical work structure controls to some extent the roles played by different stakeholders within the precarious work environment, potentially influencing the way someone from outside the workplace approaches it. These include, for example, government owned establishments such as prisons, mental hospitals as well as privately owned closed business organisations.

The purpose of this paper is to review the development of registered seafarers working onboard Hong Kong ships.

Data obtained from the Marine Department showing the number of registered seafarers from 1960 to 2015.

The registered seafarers can be observed in three different stages, namely, the peak stage from 1960 to 1982, the declining stage from 1983 to 1996 and the reforming stage from 1997 to 2015.

Very few papers can be found in Hong Kong to review the development of registered seafarers from 1960 to 2015.

The chapter assesses the state of research and gender-specific data in maritime shipping and ports. This is crucial for implementing and promoting Sustainable Development Goal 5 ‘Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls’ in the sector under study. Moreover, the present chapter examines whether progress has been made regarding the availability of gender-related data and research in the port sector.

An extensive review of the literature covering gender-related research in the shipping and port sectors going back to the pre-1990 period has been carried out. Next, data from the Port Performance Scorecard established under the United Nations Conference for Trade and Development (UNCTAD) TrainForTrade (TfT) Port Management Programme (PMP) is analysed, covering the 2015–2020 period. Last, this research is complemented by the results of a survey conducted in 2021 across UNCTAD’s TfT port network.

The literature review identified the main gender dimensions affecting maritime shipping and ports, namely health, empowerment, economic, and education. These results were completed by insights generated by the analysis of gender-related data obtained through selected member ports of the UNCTAD TfT PMP. Overall, the data provided information about the state of play and the existing data gaps and limitations relating to mainstreaming the gender dimension in maritime shipping and ports. It confirmed that traditional stereotypes about the type of job functions that can be fulfilled by women remain prevalent in these two sectors. In this context, the chapter concludes that improving data availability and accessibility in maritime shipping and ports is imperative to advance research and evidence-based policymaking that promote gender equality in maritime transport. Closing the data gap and refining data on gender across the maritime supply chain sector is therefore key. As available data are insufficiently accessible and highly aggregated and which in turn limits the analytical scope, the present chapter recommends that a framework for a Maritime Shipping and Port Gender Equality and Diversity Index be established while leveraging existing data and efforts, including by UNCTAD.

Significantly, the careers booklet issued free by the British Shipping Careers Service has changed its title. The last issue was called Passport to Adventure. Now it is called To Sea in the Seventies. The fact is that the Merchant Navy can no longer attract young men on the strength of a romantic image which relates to the days of sail, or the prospect of meeting dusky beauties in tropical places. The young men are different: they can meet the dusky beauties on a package tour, and they can only go sailing in “big” ships with the Sail Training Association. The Merchant Navy is different too.

The purpose of this paper is to see whether the concept of autonomous ship is having an effect on pioneering the sea transportation as well as improvement of ship safety and the possibility of local development. Following the lead of the first autonomous surface ship by Norway that met to develop the Advanced Autonomous Waterborne Application (AAWA) and introduce of autonomous operation to the region, this study also aims to compare the initiation of action by surface ships to that of the air and land vehicle automation.

The ideas for writing this paper came from meeting and interview with maritime professionals such as ship captains, marine chief engineers and naval architects. Through the review of various international journals, the development of Autonomy and Technology are explored and analysed. Owing to the practical approach of this paper, a qualitative research method is used with collecting and analysing information.

The findings of this paper are as follows: it brings out the importance on the potentials of unmanned vessels and its competitive advantages over existing cargo ships. Besides its contribution to reduce fatigue and workload of navigating officers, the improvement of navigational safety by eliminating human errors and reduction of harmful exhaust emission can make shipping safer and more sustainable. However, as the technology is still under development, it is too early for a final evaluation. That said, as the international regulation body, International Maritime Organisation is required to gain acceptance to future unmanned shipping and to designate routes and impose regulations for their safe operation.

Recently, there are many conferences and meetings on autonomous surface vessel focussing on regulation, technology, human-factor, legal and regulatory framework for such ships around the world. This paper summarises the current development of the autonomous surface ships, in term of the design and technology, their interaction and co-existence with manned ships and suggest some operation issues on board an autonomous surface ship during voyage. Taking Hong Kong as an example, this paper attempts to examine the feasibility for introducing the autonomous surface ships in local waters.

This study aims to examine variables and factors in vocational awareness and attitudes that affect the vocational aspiration of seafaring course students who are potential future seafaring employees.

A literature review was conducted to identify factors that prompt students in seafaring courses to pursue seafaring careers, followed by a design of preliminary questionnaire questions to survey students’ perception on the conditions of seafaring careers (i.e. vocational awareness) and their intention to pursue a seafaring career (i.e., vocational aspiration). A total of 744 seafaring course students in four Taiwanese universities completed a questionnaire developed according to the previous studies. A structured equation modelling was conducted in this research including model validity, goodness of fit, model correction and mediation effects.

With a model consisting of four factors for vocational awareness, three factors for overall attitudes and vocational aspiration as a dependent variable, the results showed that factors of vocational awareness and students’ overall attitudes were significantly correlated, and the factors of overall attitudes exhibit strong mediation effects on vocational aspiration from vocational awareness. The results confirmed that the factors are important determinants for the vocational aspiration of students.

The findings of this study provide a comprehensive approach to understand students’ seafaring aspiration for the universities, governments and shipping companies. Seafaring policies and management are discussed from the research findings.